The invention relates to a public communication system with distributed stations, comprising a broadcast sub-system for broadcasting encrypted audio and/or video information, a governing accounting system for distributing entitlements to the distributed stations and, in each station, a selectively activatable decryption sub-system which is verifiable by entitlement information in order to receive the encrypted information and to supply it to a reproduction apparatus after decryption. The foregoing may be realized as a system for pay television; payment can take place either by subscription or on the basis of the actual use of the programs supplied. The entitlements can be distributed in various ways, for example via a telephone link, in cooperation with information from the encrypted audio/video signal or not, by way of a system utilizing so-called chip cards, or by way of a coin box included in each station. It may be that access is granted to given persons and not to other persons, without payment taking place. In that case a chip card is a very suitable identification means. The broadcast medium may be the ether or a cable link organization. The signal source may be a transmitter or a reproduction apparatus which then involves a cable link. The invention can be used notably for consumer television but is not restricted thereto. It could as well be used for granting access to data bases which may be used by serial user stations simultaneously.